cindy's world

Wonder Weeks warned that I’m 2 days into the new fussy period, which starts at 14 weeks, as the baby picks up connections between motions and actions to understand a whole set of “events,” such as a ball bouncing, the fact that she can move her hand and arm at the same time, in multiple directions, in order to grasp something she sees and then bring it up to her mouth, etc. This warning includes something about the baby having inconsolable crying. I thought, “Well, Allie may cry inexplicably here and there, but it won’t be INCONSOLABLE. She rarely cries as it is, and doesn’t cry for long.” OMG.

This morning, she was woken up after only 30 mins into her morning nap by the garbage truck rumbling and beeping around our cul de sac, so she has to hear it coming AND going. She woke up screaming and was inconsolable for the next 40 minutes. I couldn’t get her to go back to sleep, but she was exhausted, so talk about crabby. My in-laws came this weekend to meet her, and had to deal with a screaming baby, whom they also did their best to entertain. My mother-in-law fed Allie her bottle (thank goodness the boycott is over and she gulped the bottle down while I pumped upstairs), burped her, and things were calm for awhile as Allie smiled and played with them in her activity walker. Soon, she got crabby again as she was up way longer than she should’ve been before she would go down for her next nap. My in-laws left for home at this point to give me the time to console her into her next nap.

Allie was down barely half an hour, after a long hysterical soothing period, when the next-door neighbor’s gardener decided it was absolutely necessary to whack the little strip of lawn between our driveways for 15 minutes with a weedwacker. And a lawnmower. And then the weedwacker again. Allie woke up SCREAMING and was again inconsolable for a long time. For the first time, I believe she was screaming and crying (tears and runny nose and all) just for the sake of screaming and crying. When I played and sung to her and made a big smiley face, she’d smile back and sometimes let out a laugh in spite of herself, and then she’d realize she’s on the wrong emotion, and then she’d go right back to wailing. I believe this is a tantrum we’re dealing with. “I’m MAD cuz I’m tired and I couldn’t sleep, so I’m going to complain to you at the top of my lungs until you think you’ll never sleep again, either!”

It took close to another hour to calm her down. She could be distracted momentarily, but she’d remember, “Oh yeah, I was having a fit,” and then go right back where she left off. I fed her, took her for a walk in the backyard and then to the mailbox, and she seemed all right although a bit wired. Finally, she yawned, and I put her down after very little soothing. Great, cuz my back was killing me from carrying her without much of a break from all her crying today. So I put her down in her crib, pulled a receiving blanket up to her waist, tiptoed out, silently closed the door, breathed a sigh of relief…and then heard in horror a new motor sound beginning. I ran to the window. The neighbor across the street was using a circular saw in his front yard. Not in the garage, but way out in the front yard. I almost cried.

So far, Allie has stayed down. She’s most vulnerable to waking at the half-hour point, when her sleep cycle comes to a natural end before the next REM cycle hits. I’m praying to the nap gods to please please please let her sleep for at least 1.5 hours this nap.

AND YUP, 36 MINUTES, AND ALLIE IS NOW UP AND CRYING CUZ THE SAW JUST STARTED AGAIN!@#$ ALL THE CUSS WORDS IN THE WORLD!@#$ I WANT TO SAW THAT NEIGHBOR IN HALF!!!

*** LATER:
I tried to look online for advice on how to “noise-train” a baby, and apparently, you CAN’T:
http://www.babysleepsite.com/how-we-sleep/baby-sleep-noise-sound/
Not only that, but apparently, you SHOULDN’T:
http://www.sleeplady.com/baby-sleep/should-i-train-my-child-to-sleep-thru-noise/

I can’t find advice to the contrary. If you know something I can read that actually teaches babies to effectively to sleep through noise and it’s backed up by research or medical science, please let me know.

Being a mom means discovering skills and strengths in yourself you never knew you had. They say you don’t know how strong you are until you have to be.

Last night, I assembled three separate breast pumps in the dark in minutes. That’s 8 + 5 + 5 = 18 little parts! =P

Now that my little girl is almost 15 weeks old, I realize there are some things I wish I knew before Allie came out into the world, such as:
* what growth spurts do to their eating;
* that it’s not only okay, but totally common, to supplement nursing with some formula while waiting for milk to come in the first couple of weeks, and it doesn’t mean your body isn’t or won’t produce milk;
* exclusively breastfed babies can go days, sometimes a week or more, without pooping once their digestive systems mature a little or when they’re going thru a growth spurt, cuz they use up all the stuff in the milk and don’t have any excess to make into poopies;
* babies need a LOT of sleep (like after every 1-2 hours of awake time), even when they’re not sleeping or napping on their own and need a little assistance;
* fussiness at night in a 6+ week-old could actually be a sign that an earlier bedtime is needed, and not just that the baby has colic or is generally crabby.

There have been things that have surprised me, too, such as:
* how much I resent anything that interferes with my baby’s sleep…loud gardeners (does that leaf blower need to be on when they’re just walking around the driveway?!), ambulance sirens (those drivers should find a different route!), screaming kids outside (it’s a SOCCER BALL, not a zombie chasing you for your brain!), careless door-slamming (you have fingers, use them to hold the knob and close the door instead of letting it slam!), the cat when he’s yowling all over the house (he KNOWS there’s a baby sleeping, he could smell it, he’s a cat!). That last one was a surprise; I thought NOTHING would come between me and my Dodo boy;
* the things I get ecstatic about when they come out of my baby…”Is that a toot? That’s a TOOT!” “*gasp* YAAAY, you POOPIED!” “GREAT burp, baby! GOOD JOB!” cuz any of these things trapped in her makes her uncomfortable, so we want them OUT, no matter how socially unacceptable it is for adults to do the same.

It’s been said many times that babies don’t come with instruction manuals. My therapist points out that all new parents at some point or another have felt bewildered, lost, scared, paranoid, and it’s not just me, because look at all the self-help baby books out there! There wouldn’t be such a market if I’m the only one who feels this way. So although the labor team that delivered Allie claims they didn’t leave her manual in there when they took her out, there ARE manuals out there available in a salad bar fashion. You pick the item(s) that work for you, and it could be a unique blend of techniques, tips, and education for each unique parent dealing with a unique baby. For me, after “Babywise,” “The No-Cry Solution,” “What to Expect in the First Year,” countless internet searches, countless texts to helpful friends, this is what I found worked for me:
“Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child” – Dr. Marc Weissbluth
“The Wonder Weeks” – Hetty van de Rijt and Frans Plooij
These two go well together for me because they answer my most burning questions, which are: (Stage direction: picture me dropping to my knees with an open-mouthed anguished expression, fists in the air, and dramatically screaming the following)
* WHAT is HAPPENING to my baby?! and
* HOW do I FIX MY BABY?!
The sleep book, as I have come to dub it, tells me what is going on developmentally in Allie’s little brain through her early growth in life, and how giving her the opportunity to be fully rested in spite of her growing restlessness helps her mood, her ability to absorb learning, increases her ability to adapt and thereby sets her up for successful future learning and adaptability. Plus, it helps me sleep through the night since she’s been sleeping through the night. Good nappers make good night-sleepers! This book teaches you how to help your baby become a good napper and good sleeper.
Wonder Weeks explains what developmental “leaps” the baby goes through at what point in his/her life, and helps you anticipate the signs that show that your baby is now at week x, which means she’s hitting a fussy period due to her current ability to sense y and z, and she’ll be trying this and that and you can help her learn these skills by playing this game or doing that activity. Apparently a baby’s development isn’t a seamless progression, it goes in leaps and bounds (and not in the figurative sense), so the baby goes through phases of behavioral changes which SEEM like a regression into cranky infancy. These regression periods were distressing to me until I learned this behavior is normal, and the clinginess/crankiness/crying are just passing phases as the baby tries to acclimate to the new perceptions her brain suddenly learns to picks up. (I used to think “OMG, this is the way it’s gonna be from now on, forever! It’s horrible and I can’t do it!” and my therapist said that’s the postpartum depression talking, the inability to see beyond the misery of the moment.) I am seeing Allie’s developments hit right at the points the book says they would. Like now, she’s entering a fussy period because she’s seeing faces and recognizing people, and would cry suddenly for no reason, sleep less well, but in improvements, she prefers to stand up and walk, roll to her side, and work on skills like that, so she finds the awake time more interesting.

Okay, and now she’s woken up super-early, crying from her morning nap, so I’ll have to end my blog posts for the same reason I’ve been ending most of my blog posts since her birth. Another sign that Wonder Weeks was right about her current fussy stage.

Sometimes Allie unexpectedly takes a long 2 hour morning nap so that I can do all the stuff I need to, such as wash and dry pump parts and bottles, tidy up the house, eat, change, etc. And sometimes, like today, she wakes up from that long morning nap for an hour, eats and plays, starts yawning and then goes down for another unexpected 1.5 (and counting) hour afternoon nap. I’ve had lunch in that time so I sit online and catch up on emails, blog posts, etc. And then some more time goes by, and my inbox shows no new activity. Where is everyone? Oh yeah, at work.

And then the issue resolves itself. By that I mean I see a FedEx truck pull up and haul a giant box to my door. I don’t want the doorbell to wake up the baby, so I intercept him at the front door and pick up the giant box, lugging it back into the house. What the heck is this? It’s freaking heavy! It’s from…”muscle egg?” And then I remember…Mr. W ordered raw pasteurized egg whites that are, like, chocolate and caramel flavored and stuff. And the giant-ass box threatening to break my back is wielding multiple stickers yelling, “REFRIGERATE or FREEZE upon ARRIVAL.” Great, I have to open this box and refrigerate what feels like the egg whites of a million hens.

Meanwhile, I realize as I’m lugging this about that I can’t close the door while I’m being dragged down by the giant box, so the delivery truck’s very loud rumbling is pouring in the front door…and sure enough, the baby starts screaming.

Refrigerate egg whites, get screaming baby, or finish this blog post?

Finish this blog post. The damn egg whites can wait.

Susanne texted me to call her last night while I was putting Allie through her bedtime feeding (another night of sleeping all the way through, and another day/night of no poopies). When I did, I was nervous. Mr. W said he was scared, too. We quickly agreed that if she says no, then we’ll ask if there are any non-monetary benefits we could provide her that would change her mind, such as more paid days off, since Mr. W and I have a lot of vacation days and holidays we can relieve her of duty. If she declines, then we thank her and move on to someone who’d be a better fit.

But Susanne said yes! She said she thought about it, and decided that if the money were the issue and we really would like her to be our nanny, and she wants to work for us, then it shouldn’t be just about the money. I thought that was a very Christian way of thinking. A working situation between employer and employee IS mainly about the money, but a more holistic view of it is whether it’s in both parties’ best interest, whether you like the person, it’s about the baby, and love, and helping others, etc. We still have to get together and crunch some numbers to decide how best to do this, but we’re gonna do it! YAY! She said the only hitch is that a family she babysits for had an emergency-type situation come up and they need her to be there full-time this month. She said they have no other option. That means that she can’t do a part-time trial period with me before she has to take over in May. That makes me a little nervous, but she offered to come over on weekends to acclimate to Allie’s routine, get Allie used to her, learn her way around the house and neighborhood. I agreed. At least that saves me some money for April, I guess.

I guess the bottom line remains the same — Susanne just needs to keep Allie alive until we get on the same page as to her routines and such. My cousin Jennifer only gave her nanny 2 days to hang around with her and the baby, learn their routine, before she went to work, and that’s working out just fine. Susanne is more than capable, and she asked to borrow and read the sleep book I’d referenced to understand my parenting routine, which can be done on her own without her being here.

Now I have to let down all the other potential nannies, the toughest of which will be Fernanda, still waiting to hear back after her interview with us.

So I called Nanny Susanne yesterday and asked if we could meet to talk shop. She wanted to know what was up, so I ended up talking to her over the phone and spitting numbers at her instead of showing her the printed calculations and scenarios I’d prepared. She says she doesn’t need to see the calculations and breakdowns; she trusts what I’m telling her. She asked for the bottom line of what I can pay, and I said that her requested $600/week net comes out to my paying a gross of $763/week, which almost eats up my own salary, and I still have to pay mortgage and insurance and gas, etc. So I offered a compromise of paying her $700/week gross, which means she takes home $555/week net. She said she’d have to check on her expenses and accounting and call me back. I told her that she is our favorite candidate and that I actually feel secure leaving Allie with her; that we’re not saying we’re unwilling to pay or she’s not worth what she’s looking to be paid, it’s that we can’t afford it; that we have an interview with someone else scheduled for tomorrow (today) and that Mr. W said if Susanne accepts our offer, that we’ll cancel the interview immediately. She told me to go ahead and take the interview so I know what’s out there and I can compare, and she’ll get back to me once she does the accounting. I’m not sure that’s a good sign.

After we hung up, I felt like I had inadvertently made myself look like I was begging her to take the job or something, and I resented that. What I don’t want to have happen, is that she takes a lower amount than she wants to and ends up resentful of us, then quits to find something else and leaves us to have to start the nanny hunt all over again. And I also don’t want to feel resentful that we’re paying her more than what I’m able to without draining all my money and savings, too. I was feeling tired of the whole mess.

Nevertheless, because the interview for Thursday (today) with an older nanny was tentative, and because she’d emailed me anyway letting me know that we can schedule the interview for whenever, I asked her if it’s all right if we postpone it because we’re waiting for some numbers to come back. That way, if Susanne says she’s fine with $555/wk, we don’t have to THEN cancel an interview, or go thru with it knowing we’re wasting everyone’s time. But I hope Susanne doesn’t leave us hanging for long.

Meanwhile, thanks to a lead from Flip Flop Girl for an online payroll program costing just $20/month (www.paycycle.com), if Susanne does agree to come on board, we’re actually ready. We just have to enter hours worked and they’ll do the paystub, withholdings and accounting. They also do the quarterly tax vouchers and W-2s and stuff so whatever we need, we just go online and print, then print or write the checks (they also do free direct deposit for our employee) and mail to the government or hand to our nanny. So that’s one big thing off our potential plate.

For an Allie update:
She had her 4th consecutive night of sleeping straight through with no middle-of-the-night feedings. Since she dropped a feeding and is now down to 5 a day, I think that’s why she hasn’t pooped in 6 days now. Her body’s not producing poop cuz she’s using all the calories. She’s not in discomfort, her stomach isn’t distended or hard, and she’s tooting, so there’s no blockage. She’s just using all the nutrients (from what I read and from what pediatricians and nurses have told me in the past during her growth spurts).
After fighting the bottle last Friday and Saturday, she’s taken a bottle a day without protest from Mr. W, stepdaughter, and yesterday, my parents. Today, I was on my own during all her potential bottlefeeding periods, so I was nervous. I turned her facing out, gave her 3 ounces, and she took that from ME without protest, too. Whew! I think I need to give her more since she seemed hungry afterwards still. I gave her the next feeding an hour early because of that.